


Not His Shepard

by Fervent_dreamer



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, F/M, It's Actually a Little Sad, Kaiden Gets a Clue, Missed Chances, Moving On, Past Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard, People's Feelings Can Change Without Telling You First, Pining, Realizations, a matter of perspective, letting go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 18:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15892026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fervent_dreamer/pseuds/Fervent_dreamer
Summary: She wasn't the Shepard that he fell in love with on the Normandy. From changed tactics to being closed off and unapproachable, Kaiden simply didn't know her anymore. He was willing to get to know her again, if she would just talk to him.A short character study exploring why Kaiden acted the way he did through ME2 and ME3. He receives a couple of clues, a few terabytes of new information, and a solid realization. Unfortunately, there's no rule saying people have to tell you when they've moved on.





	Not His Shepard

Kaiden received his first inkling on Mars.

He noticed Shepard charging headlong across the battlefield, not thinking - as she slammed into her opponents - about how it left her six wide open. He saw it in how she detonated her shields at her opponents without a thought for her safety. She bounced around the field, not stopping, not settling, every movement erratic and unpredictable even to her teammates. Instead of using her biotics to float an enemy upward, she slammed them around like a toddler with a toy.

Shepard was changed from the one he knew.

His Shepard led her team. Never micromanaging, but always calling out shots, coordinating, having them all work their way from the outskirts inward toward the center. His Shepard, while always aggressive, tempered it with caution she learned surviving Akuze. His Shepard always listened and readily answered any questions her crew had for her, even if the questions were personal.

Instead of finding a rhythm, Kaiden found himself scrambling in her wake. Moving from the midfield to the outskirts, he wound up trying to shoot dazed Cerberus troops with his pistol since his shotgun would spray too wide. Always a second too late, he watched as Shepard took more than one shot to her bare armor. One or two punched through with a spray of blood and she almost went down before he was able to provide enough cover to let her barriers regenerate.

Vega sidestepped the problem of where he fit on the battlefield entirely. Going around the back, he hunted down anyone who broke off from the main group, blasting them with a concussion round before letting loose a frag grenade.

When they finished, she took off her helmet so she could better examine the dead, their supplies, and their positioning around the entrance to the base.

Differences aside, her dark hair still slicked back to form the same bun. Her eyes still burned a stormy grey as she analyzed the aftermath of the fight. Her leg still hitched when she ran. Her voice, even tired and stressed, still triggered an ache inside him. Her presence narrowed his focus and slowed his torrent of worries.

A perfect physical facsimile.

However, Kaiden didn’t -couldn’t- trust it. He just couldn't see his Commander, the woman he loved, working for the same people that caused her own personal hell.

Maybe she didn't; but he remembered her nightmares. A hard but silent jolt that pulled him from his own slumber at 3 am. Three out of five times, it moved her to her feet and kept her up for the rest of the day. He never asked because he never had to, between the mission report and the captured footage, Kaiden almost had nightmares himself.

What was he suppose to think? That his lover, the one he watched suffocate and burn through the planet’s atmosphere was revived from the dead? Or, the much more likely option of someone using her visage to manipulate the Alliance and half the galaxy?

On Horizon, armed with two vague e-mails and a handful of shaky rumors, the last person he expected to see was her. Admittedly, he didn't handle it well.

But _how_ was he supposed to?

The rumors of her on Omega reached them quickly even out in a backwater colony, but David Anderson told him to ignore them. Then he got a call confirming them. Not once did he receive any communication directly from her.

Why?

That was the question then, and the question now. Why?

He sent her an email after that disaster of an encounter, trying to smooth over his mistake, just a little. He needed some time to wrap his head around the whole situation, but he always expected they would sit down and talk it over.

Then she blew up a relay and got herself arrested.

That seemed to be it, the final proof that Cerberus cloned her and turned her into their own little terrorist. He should have been done with it. With her. He should have been done with everything right then and there.

Except, he cancelled his dates. Except, he figured out where they were holding her, and when she ultimately wasn't court-martialed, where they kept her under house arrest. Except, at least once a day, he had her number pulled up on his omni-tool, a chasm of two seconds separating him from her voice... then he shut it down and put it away.

He would forgive her -hell, he was more than halfway there already- if she would only explain why.

Something other than the Reapers.

Working their way through the base, picking up Liara of all people along the way, he tried to talk to her.

He asked. She snapped. He gave her an opportunity to explain herself and she told him she was tired of hearing about it.

Okay, maybe comparing her to the half-husk man had been a step too far, but when he saw the glowing lines on the soldier's face, they echoed descriptions of early Shepard sightings. People mentioned glowing red cracks in her face and an ominous light behind her eyes. Speculation was thrown around like a pair of dirty gym socks. Shepard was a clone, a geth construct, a well programmed VI, a spy, the list went on.

He’d tried to peak at a report sitting on Udina's desk, but caught only "augmentations" "cybernetics" and "implants", before the door to the office hissed open, Undina himself storming through and pitching the report before sending Kaiden back to his post.

What did that mean? Kaiden wasn't a doctor, and all reports about her were above his clearance level.

The realization that the Mars base probably wasn't the right time to pin her down, literally picked him up and slammed him repeatedly into the side of a shuttle. It, uh, hammered the point home, as Joker would say. All his questions silenced as his world shorted out like a light switch.

 -

Kaiden's next few clues came at the hospital.

Kaiden, barely conscious, turned his head towards the hiss of the door. Which nurse would it be this time? Maybe he could finally ask for a shirt. When he saw his visitor, the murky haze of sleep and drugs cleared a bit.

None other than Karin Chakwas strode into the room. Her white, no-nonsense bob topped her medical garb that covered her from neck to toe. The severe set to her lips couldn't hide the affection creasing at her eyes. While she'd never had children, years of dealing with "unruly" soldiers had given her the same qualities of the best school teachers he'd met - the ones that could stop a pack of biotics with just a look, even right after a carb up and a sugar boost.

"Lieutenant Major Alenko," she said. She walked straight to the bed and snatched up his charts without the slightest hesitation. "I see you're continuing to test the thickness of your skull."

Only his own mother could have put him more at ease. Kaiden didn't try to hide his smile as he said, "Wasn't intentional this time, Doc."

She hummed, not quite disbelieving or accepting his claim.

"It's true!" He half laughed half protested. His ribs twinged.

"It's always unintentional with you." She tsked at his chart. " 'But Karin, how was I supposed to know lifting four men was going to overload my amp?' 'Fifty tons of gear was standard at brain camp and it was going to cut down our docking time!' "

"It wasn't fifty tons," Kaiden protested. "I've never hauled fifty tons of anything."

She fixed him with a stern glare until they both chuckled. "I’m glad to see you're in one piece, Kaiden."

"You too. When the Moon went dark, well, I tried not to think about everyone we'd lost. I'm glad you weren't one of them."

"You won't get rid of me that easy." Chakwas patted his blanket covered foot, one of the few bits of him not broken or purple. She continued to scroll through his chart. "It looks like they've got you taken care of. Cranial pressure is down, subdermal swelling is down, they may even be able to reconnect your amp in a couple of days. There are a few notes here saying your port was sparking.” She swiped through his brain scans next.

"Thankfully there were only minor burns along your hairline rather than it shorting out your entire brain." She said. Kaiden shuddered just as she glanced at him over the top of the data-pad.

The possibility of becoming a vegetable always loomed over L2's, like some kind of closet monster that occasionally could, and would, reach out and take someone whenever they felt like. Just another part of the whole human experiment package. Kaiden had learned to carry that extra weight, strapping it to the bottom of his travel pack right next to Rahna and Vyrnnus. This time? The swipe of that boogeyman had been closer than he was comfortable with.

Karin continued. "I trust we won't be repeating this experience?"

"No ma'am." He promised with a grin and the utmost sincerity.

"Good." She set the chart down and rolled a chair from the corner of the room next to his bed, angled so she had both him and the hospital monitors in easy view. It amused Kaiden that she couldn't seem to help herself.

"So how are you, Kaiden, really? And I do mean besides the grievous injury and near-death experience."

Kaiden played dumb. "What do you mean? Earth? I'm devastated."

"As are we all," Karin said. "However, I think you know that's not what I meant."

"I know," Kaiden said, resigned.

"I heard you escaped Earth on the Normandy." She pressed, but did it gently, touching the tender skin around bruises of a different kind. The soft empathy in her eyes made Kaiden study the mesh-like weave of the hospital blanket. The blanket didn't know the raw wounds of him. However well meaning, it didn't peel back the faulty layers he’d spent the last two years building up around him. She said, “I heard the Commander practically followed you through the surgical doors.”

As she trailed off, she leaned forward so Kaiden couldn’t help but meet her gaze again. “Kaiden, how are you doing?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.” Kaiden stopped short of running a hand through his hair when his ribs protested yet again. He lowered the arm gingerly across his middle instead. “I’m glad to have her back in action. But I’m having a hard time believing it’s really her. She won’t answer my questions, we never did get the chance to talk - You worked with her at Cerberus, right? Can you tell me? Is she really Shepard?”

Karin wanted to be mad at him. He could tell from the way her face blanked and the audible click of her teeth as she swallowed her first response. But he didn’t mean it like… that. He just wanted answers, he just wanted to be sure. Even now, the whole thing seemed like a fairytale. Any other possibility seemed more likely than a veritable resurrection. He wanted to believe her - hell, believe _in_ her- again. Desperately. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t trust in that, and have it taken away from him. Not again. It would kill him.

Ever the professional, Karin took a breath and a moment to gather her thoughts.

“Would my word convince you Kaiden? Truly? If I told you that she was Commander Jane Shepard through and through, would that be enough for you?”

Kaiden shrugged, helpless and miserable with it.

“That’s what I thought.” Karin said, not unkindly.

“I want to understand, though,” he said. “I just need some answers. Every time I’ve asked, the question was either dismissed, classified, or shut down.” He couldn’t help but hear the echo of Shepard telling him to “ _fucking_ drop it”.

Karin’s eyes softened with pity and some understanding of her own. Of the old crew, he knew the least of what had happened for the past three years and he couldn’t help but take it personally.

“It’s difficult sometimes, working for the Alliance,” she said. “Especially when the higher ups deem information need to know.” She pulled up her omni-tool. “I gained a copy of some Cerberus files when we were on our way out. A colleague was kind enough to share them incase Shepard ran into any complications. This is highly unethical, but hopefully it can stand in for the time you missed out on, and perhaps ease some of your doubts.”

A tap, then two, and terabytes of data were being transferred over to him.

“I’m sorry, Karin. I should be able to just take you at your word. Hell, I should be able to take Shepard at her’s.”

“It’s alright. Looking at it objectively, it’s frankly something straight out of a fiction novel. I’d be hard pressed to believe it myself, if I hadn’t been there.” She patted his hand this time. “You can read it for yourself in a minute, but Kaiden?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s really her.”

Kaiden swallowed hard around that stupid lump in his throat. “Thanks, Karin.”

The download complete, she left him to rifle through the mounds of data. Kaiden thought he saw her hesitate at the door, but then she was gone.

The files were… comprehensive. Very comprehensive. Even having seen his share of battles and their messy results, these were nauseating - or would have been. The plus side to a severe concussion were large, regular doses of antiemetics. It did nothing for the psychological urge, though.

It took him a full minute to figure out the first picture was Shepard. It was just a pile of… half charred barbeque. Some armor had burned away down to the bone. Hell, past the bone. That there, that limb was completely severed -

He stopped, taking a moment to stare past the disgustingly perfect day shining over the Presidium outside his window, grieving all over again.

Dead. She hadn’t lied. She’d been well and truly dead.

His thoughts were interrupted by a cadre of nurses rushing in, responding to his elevated heart rate.

“No, no. I’m alright thank you,” he said, flicking away the omni-tool. Sniffing, he smiled at time with a charm they didn’t believe for a second. They took his vitals while they were there and urged him to call them if he was in any kind of distress. He lied and assured them he would. The Asari looked like she wanted to hit him with a sedative anyway, but left without doing anything.

Kaiden leaned back, studying the seams and panels that made up the ceiling for a while. He counted them while he braced himself for another go at the files.

Whoever documented this, was an accountant’s dream. Everything had been recorded down to the microliter and nanite.

Christ.

Skipping all the jargon that would have taken him another seven years of school to comprehend, Kaiden mainly stuck to the progress pictures. Like the most macabre science project in existence, he saw his lover slowly being rebuilt. There was even a note stating how fortunate they were she suffocated because while the neurons had died, it left all the pathways intact.

Kaiden took another break after reading that, lest he summon the nurses again. He put the whole thing away after reading the request denial to implant a fucking control chip into her brain.

Being grateful to the Illusive Man, who’d’ve thought?

Head throbbing and eyes burning because of the hours he’d forced himself to read with a concussion, he tried to wrap his head around the whole thing.

She was Shepard. Wholly and completely, Shepard. God.

A slight whirr indicated the machine automatically dispensing his mediation. The corners of his eyes dampened. The incessant pounding behind his eyes hurt too much for him to think anything other than: it’s her. It’s her, it’s her, it’s really her.

Hell, if he couldn’t forgive her anything.

Shepard.

She was his last thought as he fell into a drug induced sleep.

 -

Kaiden hated recovery. Most people did. Everything was slow, painful, and you couldn’t do anything that you did a week ago without herculean effort or some help. The hospital offered group PT for biotics. Kaiden attended once he was cleared for light - emphasis on _light_ \- biotics use. His port was still a bit tender, but no longer sent shooting pains along his nervous system.

Interestingly enough, there was a Drell in the class as well. Quiet, serious, but nice enough. More than once though, in his peripheral, Kaiden caught the Drell staring at him.

Strange.

Kaiden was just settling back into his room after one of these sessions when he looked out the windows to the hall before darkening the tint on the glass.

Shepard! His heart thrilled at the sight of a back he could pick out of a crowd. He hadn’t been entirely sure she’d respond to his email.

Once the pain receded enough for all the implications to settle in, Kaiden had realized he’d been an ass of epic proportions and -

Wait. Was that Garrus?

Shepard gestured to a turian in heavy armor with blue markings on most of his face, rest was covered in scars. What happened? Whatever they were talking about, Shepard wasn’t thrilled. Tension rode her shoulders and her gestures became wilder until Garrus took her hands in both of his. He leaned down then, mandibles twitching as he talked to her in what Kaiden assumed were quieter tones. Shepard’s back moved as she took a giant breath in then blew it back out. A three fingered hand rubbed her shoulder before Garrus stepped away.

Instinct moved Kaiden to darken the privacy tint before he realized he’d done it.

What the hell was that?

 -

Kaiden had time to settle down before she came in. It took her a good fifteen minutes more than he thought it would. She must have taken a lap around the building or seen Garrus out. The doors hissed open and she strode in, the N7 hoodie she wore doing nothing to hide her military bearing. Although, to anyone familiar with her hard suit, she at least looked comfortable.

“I’m glad you asked me to come. It’s good to see that you’re going to be okay.” She said as she pulled up a chair.

“Thanks.” Garrus or not, he was honestly glad she’d come.

“You almost died on my watch,” she said, leaning in, but never touching him, “it was horrible to see.”

“I want you to be straight with me then. After Mars, after Horizon… we’re good, right?”

“We’ve been through hell together, had each other’s backs. That kind of bond is hard to break.” That was such a non-answer, in any other situation he’d accuse her of turning into a politician.

“But no, not just that. You were my commander, sure. But you listened too. When I told you about how Rahna broke my heart, you didn’t judge me. You knew I needed that.” He paused. “We went through Ash’s death together.”

The familiar grief flashed through her eyes, he knew because it flashed through him too. Even after all this time, he still thought he should be the one in pieces on Virmire. Shepard said softly, “Yeah, we did.”

“So what do you say? Are we good?” Kaiden hoped so. He needed them to be. Even if it didn’t end up the way he wanted, he couldn't stand to have her hate him.

“You and me… we can butt heads. But for now, yeah, we’re good.”

“I’ll take that.”

“What’s going on? Is there something else?” Of course she would see that.

“Yeah, maybe.” He didn’t want to ask. He wanted the hope, however small - “Is there something between you and Garrus?”

Shepard sighed, an outpouring of emotion he couldn’t quite read. She rubbed at her temples, “Our fight on Horizon really threw me. You just shut me down.”

“I know. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. There you were… alive! Can we-” Kaiden sighed too. He knew what _that_ non-answer meant. He also knew that if he tried to explain himself, they would just end up fighting again. “Can we just put this behind us? Please.”

“Feel like we’ve cleared the air?”

No. But what else could he do?

“Yeah. You know, I’m not sure that I’ve been wrong about Cerberus, but I’ve been wrong about you.” There, that was as close as he could get right now. “I should let you get back to the Normandy. Wish I could come with you.”

“Take care of yourself Kaiden, we need you at a hundred percent.” The galaxy needed everyone at a hundred and fifty percent if any of them were to have a prayer.

“Will do. Thanks for coming.”

She shot him a small, uncertain smile on her way out. They were both bad at this kind of thing.

Kaiden sank back into the slightly too firm hospital pillows. He told himself that, that was it. Matters were settled, finally. He should have been relieved. That should have been the end of it. Of course, it wasn’t.

 -

The final “clue”, the one that took it from his head and chiseled it into his heart, came to him once again, on the battlefield.

After assuring Shepard that he would be professional and nothing would interfere with his performance, Kaiden was let back onto the ground team.

Trudging through the dirt of Rannoch, fighting hordes of Geth (a nice change from the reconstructed dead across every species), he saw it.

They came upon a base. The raise pathways leading into the heart of it were crawling with the sentient machines. Hardly a hand signal was thrown up from Shepard before she was charging immediately into the fray.

Somehow Garrus was already set up on the high ground and was picking off anyone that came within ten feet of her. He’d always been an impressive sniper, but the speed and accuracy with which he scoped and dropped them was insane. Garrus knew it too, the way he crowed about it. It was such a flawless union of incredible skills, the synergy between them was incredible.

So much so that Kaiden felt like he was scrambling to keep up with them. He found himself a job in corralling them like a sheep dog, herding them into groups for Shepard to blast into the middle of, but really, he felt superfluous and out of the loop. Even if they had the ability to read each other’s minds, they couldn’t have been more in sync.

Between a reave and a shotgun blast, Kaiden would see Garrus twitch his rifle to a new batch of targets just as the field glowed electric blue and Shepard shot herself across the distance to the same batch. She’d hit with wall the force of a charging Krogan, then detonated her barrier, just like on Mars.

Garrus, unlike Kaiden at the time, knew the game, and picked off each target as easy as fruit from a tree.

Their banter continued over the radio.

“You line ‘em up, and I’ll knock ‘em down.”

You didn’t need to be a Turnian to hear the joy in his subvocals.

“Maybe I should calm down,” said Shepard, almost musing. “Let one or two of them through and make it seem like a fair fight.”

Kaiden lifted a Geth towards her, and she slammed it to the ground, leaving it a pile of smoking parts.

“That’s just mean, Shepard,” Kaiden joked back at her. He hoped the desperation behind it was sufficiently hidden. “Giving them false hope like that. Better to just crush their spirits and be done with it.”

“He’s got a point, what would Legion say?” Garrus chuckled over the comms.

Legion?

Shepard threw an easy smile Kaiden’s way. It was not his smile.

No, this was not his Shepard, and he finally knew why. It wasn’t because of Cerberus, who did their best to preserve her, nor because of life, and all the shitty situations it threw at them. His Shepard was different because she was no longer his Shepard, she was Garrus’s.

She exposed her back now because she trusted Garrus to watch it. She threw herself recklessly into situations because Garrus gave her unspoken permission to let go, never leaving her side. She didn’t explain herself anymore because what was the need? He already understood her.

The realization hit Kaiden like a launcher missile, all but knocking him to the floor. It couldn’t be clearer to him if someone had typed it up on old fashioned paper and stabled it into the soft tissues of his heart.

The three of them finished the fight.

That night, Kaiden locked himself on the observation deck, with some help from EDI. He had to explain to her that he wanted some alone time, uninterrupted. Just for the one night, he promised. He simply didn’t want anyone, well-meaning or not, to barge in.

He’d honestly expected more questions before she agreed to help him but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

After locking the door with an encrypted sequence, then disconnecting the manual override, Kaiden pulled out a bottle of… the label was indecipherable - he’d been assured it was strong, though - and a glass. He flopped down onto the couch and stared at the stars going by. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them, dotting this tiny window alone.

One, two, three, shots to get started. Minutes passed before they hit, making his thoughts slide like dry ice over a warm table.

Perspective was a funny thing. Everyone knows that everyone is different, but rarely do people ever actually imagine what it must be like to be the other person. You always want someone to step into your shoes, but how often do you return the favor? Really return the favor?

Kaiden never once imagined what it would be like, to wake up after _knowing_ you had died, fresh scars still pulling at your skin. How would he have reacted? What would he have done? Then to try and explain to people what had happened? Honestly, he didn’t know how he would have done it better. He couldn’t even begin to imagine. Looking at it from that side, then filtering his own behavior through that lens, he was a dick of epic proportions.

But space is omni-directional, which meant that Shepard could have tried to see the situation from his point of view too.

Shots four, five, six, and seven for good measure, burned on their way down. Seven wanted to rebel a little, but Kaiden swallowed it down with all the practice of a first-year academy student.

Perspective was a funny thing. All this time, he thought they had been reconciling, working their issues out at last. He’d never stopped loving her, despite it all, why should she feel any different? It was just small mountain in the middle of their relationship, but they could cross it together. He’d even let her drive the Mako over it.

At least that’s what he’d thought.

Look at him, the better part of forty and he just now figured out that people could move on and leave you behind without telling you first. Damn. Now that was mind blowing.

Seven, eight, ten, and eleven burned bad enough he coughed and his eyes watered. Kaiden’s face finally went numb and all the tension left his body in a rush.

He hadn’t known he lost her. How was he supposed to know he needed to win her back?

With a bright flash the glass flew from his hand and shattered against the bulkhead. Considering the material it was made of, he would have been impressed if the situation hadn’t been so unfair.

How? No really, how was he supposed to win a game he didn’t know he was playing? How was he supposed to defend himself when he didn’t even know he was on trial?

Kaiden’s hand shook as he put the bottle to his lips, but he just steadied it with his teeth and took a long pull. His biotics were burning through the first shots anyway, time to keep up. He coughed and maybe spilled a little. It burned, his eyes had never stopped watering from the first time, and this just made it worse. He sniffed and wiped at his face.

...

Shit.

…

Fuck.

Kaiden finished that bottle within the first three hours of his vigil. He shattered it over the same place as the glass with a forceful, but clumsy throw.

The stars shined calmly on through the torrent of emotions washing through him, fueled by the alcohol. Before he’d started this, he’d disconnected his omni-tool. He was drunkenly frustrated with the fact, because he wanted to give Shepard a piece of his mind. It was only fair. She didn’t hesitate to tell him where to get off. But he couldn’t muster the coordination to get the tool to function properly again.

Eventually, he gave up and shoved the couch over.

Then he righted it again because that left nowhere to sit.

Kaiden spent the next five hours with his soul out among those stars. His biotics slowly burned away the alcohol, and circles formed under his eyes where they then deepened and darkened. The tears, eventually stopped on their own.

There, in that closed off room, just him and the galaxy, Kaiden came to a conclusion. A conclusion within himself, about himself.

With that he carefully, tenderly, packed up the memories of _his_ Shepard into a silk lined box. He put them on a shelf in the back of his mind next to childhood memories of his grandparents, next to his first crush and his dreams of being normal. He let his hand linger for only a moment, then walked away from them never to look back.

In the still hours of the morning, he sent a message to Dr. Michel. Nothing forward, that would be rude after the way he’d treated her. Just an update on how he was functioning in the field and some innocuous questions about how the situation was at the hospital. He’d keep an eye out for any supplies they could scavenge, was there anything in particular she was looking for? Depending on how that all went, he’d make some tentative plans for after the war.

Because there would be an after.

His or not, Shepard would make sure of it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The way both Kaiden and Ashley handle Shepard throughout the later games frustrates me. This initially started out as a way to force, Kaiden at least, to get a clue.  
> But over the course of a couple thousand words, I was able to see, really see, how everything would have looked like from their perspective. Kaiden honestly surprised me while I was writing this out. Do I like them any better now? Nope. But it made me kinder to them and a bit less angry. As a writer, or even a reader, you need to be able to put yourself fully into someone’s skin and I think before this, I was half-assing it.  
> Con/crit always welcome, and if anyone is willing to give any pointers on summaries or tags, I would be eternally grateful.


End file.
